


Road Trip

by Iron



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Generation 1
Genre: Fluff without Plot, Fluffy, M/M, Road Trip, Slice of Life, commission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 09:09:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21317695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iron/pseuds/Iron
Summary: Tracks has a mission to complete. Raoul goes with him. There’s a clown in there, somewhere.A short, sappy fluff-fic about two idiots in love.
Relationships: Tracks/Raoul
Comments: 13
Kudos: 57





	Road Trip

There’s one thing that Raoul could say for modern amenities: no terrible, overlong road trips down South to see his grand parents. They fly planes down to see them every summer instead, because Mama doesn’t want to put the miles on their old van when the cost of it would be more than the cost of the plane seats, and Raoul _likes_ flying. He likes it when Tracks takes him flying best, of course, but any time in the air is a pretty good deal. 

Course, he likes hanging out with his buddy more than he likes flying. It’s why when Tracks says the Autobots are sending him off on a super secret important mission, one that would take him _days_ to complete, Raoul told him he was going before his friend could even finish telling him about it. 

“It’s eighteen hours in a _car_,” Tracks argues halfheartedly. “To deliver a package to a scientist up in _Oregon_.” There was nothing, he knew, worth seeing in Oregon. Not even in Portland. “And they’re making me _drive_ up there.” 

Raoul shrugs, hands stuck in his jean pockets, and grins. “It’s August. Betcha there’s a state fair going on with a derby. I’d pay to get outta this heat, too, so it’s a win-win.” 

“So… road trip?” 

“Road trip.” Raoul throws his hands up, hip cocked, and it is decided. 

-

It’s not that easy, of course. Raoul needed to buy snacks, for one. He loads up on his favorites, Squeeze-It’s and Cheezepuffs and a couple of Lunchables ‘cause Mama wouldn’t let him go with Tracks again if he didn’t eat _some_ sort of vegetable while he was with the mech. So he’s got food, eventually, and Tracks even offers to use the Autobot credit card to pay for it. Raoul take him up on it, because _snacks_, but only after they’ve already loaded up in the car and are halfway out of the state. Tracks has a box of tapes in his front seat for Raoul to play, half of them mixtapes put together by Blaster, A/C cranked up high, and it’s not an hour out before they’re singing along to Rush songs and watching the red rocks give way to scrubland outside the windows. 

They have a schedule to follow, courtesy of Prowl. Dumb thing. It means that Tracks is driving most of the morning up 395, pushing past even when _Raoul_ is done being on the road and ready for a break. He plays about every Rush song ever made, before Tracks closes his tape deck and won’t let Raoul open it again. “No, I’m not listening to another crooning song about – about long hair and kissing organics!” 

“Aw, what’s wrong with kissing organics?” Raoul laughs, running bare hands over Track’s dashboard. He’d discarded his gloves two hours in, when the sun had started beating down through the sports car’s windows so strong that not even his Cybertronian air conditioner could combat it. “It’s nice, hombre. Soft mouths, good smells…” 

“I’ve never seen you kiss another organic,” Tracks points out. Outside the window, scrub races past them in smudges of sage-on-red. Raoul resists the urge to look out the window and stare. 

“Gotta be interested in someone like that to want to kiss them. I ain’t.” He thumbs a bit of threading on the pseudo leather-and-wood of Track’s interior, marveling at the detailing. There’s even realistic wood grain. “What about you? I know you guys kiss. I saw it – saw it and more at one of those after parties you guys pretend you don’t have.” He almost laughs when he sees Tracks’ mirror wiggle. He can tell when his guy’s greeting embarrassed. 

“That is none of your business.” His mech says stiffly. “Now sit down and we will listen to some of _my_ music. I need to keep all sensors on the road. You know Californians, none of them can drive.” 

“We’re not even in…” 

But the music’s drowning him out before he can finish his sentence, and he’s left staring out into the desert. 

\- 

They stop at a clown-themed diner, somewhere between Silver Springs and Reno. There’s a bug old clown out front, and the parking lot’s a splash of paint on the ground in what might have been a mural, once, before the sand got to it. Raoul’d pass up on it except he ran out of snacks before they hit the I-80 and he’s _starving_, and they’ve been in the car for long enough that morning’s fallen into night. He can hear things chirping and buzzing and squealing, in the dark, replacing the low buzz of the city like he’ll never get used to. 

The clown leers down at them. The clown has a drive through with curb-side dining, and so under the clown they eat. Raoul wolfs down a burger so soaked in grease that it drips down his chin and onto the garishly-painted ground, Tracks idling under him. He’s not actually allowed to eat in the mech – Track’s rule, even though Raoul promised him a full detailing when they got to Portland – so he’s sitting with his feet hanging out in the cold, hunched over his knees to make sure he won’t be leaving food in the mech’s interior. Can’t really blame him. Raoul wouldn’t want grease in his insides either. 

“I think it’s staring at me.” Tracks mutters. He’s rocking slowly back and forth on his wheels, headlights setting the too-wide, gap-toothed smile aflame. 

Raoul swallows around his mass of meat and carbs and grease. “It’s not staring at you. If it was staring at anything, it’d be staring at me.” 

“What’s worth looking at on you that’s not also touching me?” Tracks mumbles. His lights blink, and the clown seems to jerk furiously in the shadows, enraged, before the lights settle again and it’s still. Raoul keeps eating. 

“My hair, for one. You lot don’t have hair.” He tosses his head, nose in the air. “And my sense of _style_.” 

“I have style. Have you _seen_ the rest of the Autobots? I’m the most stylish mech left in our whole species!” He puffs up, plating bristling and clown momentarily forgotten. “My paint choices alone should make me someone to look at.” 

Raoul can’t help but laugh, shoveling the rest of the burger in his mouth as fast as he can. “Yeah yeah, pretty car. I know you’re the shiniest of all.” He wipes his hands down on his jeans before patting the corner of Track’s seat. The mech shudders in disgust, but he doesn’t say anything about the lingering sheen of grease on his hands. 

Shoveling limp, greasy fries in his maw as fast as he can, eyes on the dimly-glowing brightness of the clown’s swollen white ones, yellowed from age, shudder running down his spine. 

Fucking _clowns_. 

Raoul is swinging his legs back inside Track’s chassis minutes later, and they’re off on the road again. The sky this far out of civilization is a blanket of lights overhead, dim and barely visible. Raoul’s never seen so many stars before. He’s almost sure he can see the Milky Way, once they get far enough up the high way that it’s just forests on either side, narrow strip of sky above their heads. He tells Tracks that, fingers leaving smudges on the mech’s window where he tries to point it out. 

Tracks entertains him. His mapping system can name every star in the sky, and Raoul’s half-remembered constellations are all egregiously wrong. 

“That one’s Cybertron,” he tells Raoul when the man tries to claim it’s something called a _Metroid_. “Or it used to be.” “

“Your home.” 

“Where I was sparked.” Tracks agrees. “In the Towers, among the High Elites of Cybertron. They used to say the Towers would sing, when the wind hit them right.” 

“Did they?” 

Tracks keeps all his sensors on the road, outside himself. Just in case a deer comes leaping into the road. “No. I never heard it, anyways.” 

Raoul makes a soft noise, hands on Track’s armrest, rubbing softly. “Singing hills, huh?” 

It’s quiet. They put on one of Blaster’s mixes. The soft crooning fills his insides and spills out of him as they drive, pooling like his headlights on the asphalt. 

Raoul is almost asleep when Tracks pulls off to the side of the road, down a little dirt path that makes him grimace internally. The roar of water fills his sensors. He transforms around Raoul, long practice letting him spill the man into his hands. “Hound said we should stop here.” 

The falls, even in the dark, are beautiful. Moonlight flashes off of them in bright flashes, and the air is frigid and full of water. Raoul nuzzles into the thumb cupped around his shoulder, body relaxed with sleep. “It reminds me of your paint,” he mumbles. “Blue and all that.” 

“It does?” 

“Mm.” The detour probably added an hour to their time. They’re still almost four hours out from the city. Raoul is falling asleep in his hands, and Tracks can feel it tugging at him, too, so he transforms back around Raoul and settles on his wheels. “You should get white wells.” 

White wells would look awful with his reds. He doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say anything, because Raoul is already asleep. 

Tomorrow they’ll wake up soaked next to the falls, and Raoul will spend an hour wiping him down inside and out before they’ll get back on the road, and it will take them all day to go those last four hours. The next week he’ll show up outside of Raoul’s apartment with white well tires and the man will laugh at him, and life will go on, simple and happy like this. 

Tomorrow. Tonight his human is sleeping with his cheek smooshed against his window and his feet against his arm rest, snoring softly, and Tracks doesn’t want to think of there being any future past this.

**Author's Note:**

> For @gogoandyrobo on Twitter for the TFCon Merch Trade! This was fun. These two should get more fic.


End file.
